'True Blood' Review: "Karma"

‘True Blood’ season 7 spurts out its 6th episode of the final year, “Karma,” as Bill attempts to deal with his newfound circumstances, while Eric and Pam team with the Yakuza to hunt Sarah Newlin, and Lafayette discovers the truth about Tara's fate.

Last week's ‘True Blood’ installment, “Lost Cause,” saw Sookie unwittingly the host of a party for the town, while Eric and Pam tracked Sarah Newlin to Texas, and Jessica made a surprising discovery about James, with deadly consequences, so what's next for the final year?

Read on for your in-depth recap of everything you need to know about ‘True Blood’ season 7, episode 6, “Karma”!

Still gripping his Yakuza nemesis' jaw, a woozy Eric is annoyed to fight off the remaining thugs, only stopping once he sees that Pam has been captured. The two are taken to the Yakonomo building, wherein they’re chained inside a conference room, and given seven hours until the sunrise obliterates them. Back in Bon Temps, Bill comes to grips with his infection and calls a lawyer's office to get his affairs in order, unaware that Jessica has returned home and overheard the conversation and his diagnosis. Bill makes up an excuse to Jessica that he has to leave, denying that anything is wrong.

Lafayette refuses to let Lettie Mae out of his sight, finding James waiting at his home in need of a place to stay. Hearing Lettie Mae’s predicament, James volunteers his blood to help Tara’s mother sort out any connection with her deceased daughter, something Lafayette insists on exploring with her. The two drink James’ blood, and settle on the couch for their trip. Meanwhile, a guilty and nervous Jason returns home to find Violet in lingerie looking to surprise him, assuring that she’s as much his as he is hers. Elsewhere, Bill arrives to the overcrowded Kapneck Law Offices, and reluctantly takes a number.

Back in the Yakomono building, an Asian cowboy named Mr. Gus Jr. introduces himself to Pam and Eric with five minutes to spare, hoping to make a deal for Sarah Newlin’s whereabouts. Eric refuses to cooperate, though Pam reluctantly agrees to provide information in exchange for sparing both their lives. Eric insists on being the one to kill Sarah himself, something Mr. Gus balks at, before Pam coerces the two to agree, and barely averts a fiery fate. Meanwhile, a hooded Sarah Newlin breaks into her sister Amber’s home in search of shelter, only to find her infected vampire kin unwilling to help. The exertion of the confrontation, however, causes Amber to pass out.

Jessica rouses Jason from bed with a call, asking him to bring Sookie over to Bill’s place without explaining the nature of the emergency. Jason reluctantly agrees and sneaks out, while an angry Violet overhears the exchange and trashes their basement. Nearby, Andy Bellefleur awakens and stumbles upon his daughter Adilyn and Holly’s son Wayne in bed together, for which Andy angrily chases the nude boy out of the house. Alerted to the commotion, Holly storms off with Wayne for Andy hurting her son, the two teenagers exchanging vows of love in between.

Riding their high together, both Lettie Mae and Lafayette find Tara on the crucifix in the woods, lowering her off before the apparition motions to follow her. Back in the real world, Nicole delivers an ultimatum to Sam to leave Bon Temps with her for the safety of their child, while Jason brings a hungover Sookie to see Jessica at the Compton manner. Jessica reveals what she’d overheard, though while she and Jason deny its likelihood, Sookie remembers that she’d had an open arm wound that night in the woods before Hep-V vampires exploded over her, and Bill had since fed on her. Concerned, Sookie asks Jason to take her to a clinic for testing.

Cleaning up Bellefleur’s, Arlene attempts to convince Holly to return Andy’s calls, while Bill continually languishes in the crowded office, unnerving other infected vampires with the unusually rapid spread of his symptoms. Meanwhile, Sookie has her blood taken at the clinic, but nervously tells Jason she doesn’t feel ready to return home just yet. Still in their vision, Lettie Mae and Lafayette follow Tara to an apparition of their old home, wherein Tara frantically digs in the dirt. Their trip is ended by the arriving Reverend Daniels, who asks Lettie Mae to choose between him and the potential drug relapse, though Lettie Mae insists on doing right by her daughter.

Andy arrives to Bellefleur’s looking to talk things out with Holly, for which Arlene mediates that the two need to sync with their new family dynamic, and understand the difficulties their children are going through. Meanwhile, Sookie and Jason drink outside of a convenience store and debate whether or not they truly care for their most recent relationships. Jason resolves to finally break things off with Violet, just before Sookie gets a call from the clinic that confirms her status as a carrier of the Hep-V virus.

Finally called to meet with his lawyer, Bill finds that the law has difficulty reconciling his 1800s will with that of a living person’s, thanks to the late Governor Burrell’s legislation, thereby making it almost impossible to leave his estate to Jessica. The woman offers to have Bill adopt Jessica and circumvent the waiting period for a bribe of $10 million, but Bill balks, attempting to glamour her unsuccessfully, thanks to her contact lenses. Angered, Bill kills the lawyer and her guard, before sauntering out. Elsewhere, Andy and Holly return home to find that Adilyn and Wayne have run away to Fort Bellefleur for privacy.

As Amber awakens, Sarah attempts to explain to her sister that she needs a place to hide, and has since become a vastly different person than the Sarah Newlin responsible for the vampire plague. Amber rejects the idea of her sister’s newfound spiritualism, at least until “Noomi” reveals that Hep-V in fact has a cure, one that she drank in fleeing from the Vamp Camp facility, thereby becoming its living embodiment. Meanwhile, Sookie returns to the Compton manner to confirm to Jessica that it was she who inadvertently infected Bill, before the two embrace.

Jason readies to break up with Violet, but finds their home empty save for a trashed basement, and a note seemingly taking care of the split for him. Meanwhile, Violet finds Adilyn and Wayne in Fort Bellefleur and offers them a better place to hide from their parents, provided they ditch their cell phones to avoid tracking. Finally, Eric, Pam and the Yakuza arrive to Amber’s home to find the vampire miraculously healed, while Bill arrives home in Bon Temps to find Sookie and Jessica waiting for him.

OUR REVIEW:

We’ll try to make this brief, considering that Comic-Con 2014 likely drove a great deal of attention away from Sunday’s latest ‘True Blood,’ in spite of its final season panel unfolding in Ballroom 20 with a fancy new teaser of the weeks to come. In short, the continually narrower focus of the final season continues to help simplify matters, and where last week’s revelry polarized a number of viewers, “Karma” unfolds in a much more direct fashion to prepare us for the final episodes of the season, twists and all.

While we have a plausible explanation for Bill’s latest predicament, most notable was that of Sarah Newlin being revealed as a likely antidote to the Hep-V plague, greatly complicating the strained reasons to keep Anna Camp’s character in the mix. The apparent success of Sarah healing her sister certainly throws a number of wrenches into each story, between Eric teaming with the Yakuza to seek vengeance, and now Bill attempting to live out life before the rapidly-spreading disease takes over. For his part, Eric has only returned four episodes ago, but the thread certainly needed an additional tie to keep tethered to the story proper in Bon Temps.

In addition, we also saw Lafayette moving over into Lettie Mae’s beliefs that Tara may be attempting to communicate from the great beyond, a stunted, if intriguing progression that seems to be working to something much larger in the coming weeks. Bringing up the rear, we had Andy and Holly’s family troubles, compounded with whatever vengeance Violet intends to seek on Jason, though neither story stands to captivate as much as the others, at least for now.

All in all, “Karma” made for a reasonably strong hour that still relied on a few conventions here and there (Sookie inevitably rolling back toward a Bill hookup), but ultimately left us in a good place for the final four episodes. It remains to be seen if any one story will unite the characters, but “Karma” at least promises to bring things full circle for the moment.

Well, what say you? Did you get your fill of fang-banging ‘True Blood’ action? What did you think about tonight's revelatory installment, “Karma”? Join the discussion in the comments, and check back again next Sunday for another all-new recap and review of 'True Blood' season 7's latest, "One Last Time"!